In a career that featured such highlights as possibly shooting the last photograph of John Lennon before his death, Annie Leibovitz is one of America’s best recognized photographers, her range of work including the beautifully posed nude of a pregnant Demi Moore at her prime and Whoopi Goldberg’s famous milk bathtub shot.
Rated as one of the best portrait photographers in the US, the 60-year-old Connecticut native is still very busy clicking her lens. After time spent on a kibbutz in Israel, Leibovitz returned to the US to study painting at San Francisco’s Art Institute, but where photography eventually became her first love.
Her career proper began in 1970 when she was one of the original staff photographers for Rolling Stone magazine in its start-up days. By 1972 she had become the magazine’s chief photographer, holding this job for 10 years and even accompanying the magazine’s namesake rock group on its world tour in 1975.
Moving to Vanity Fair in 1983, Leibovitz’s ability to get her subjects very involved in their portrait shots became her signature, shooting a wide range of the world’s most famous people, including presidents, famous authors and teen rock and film stars.
Following her winning a Clio Award in 1987 for her work in advertising, including the high profile Amex “Membership” ad campaign, Washington’s National Portrait Gallery featured an exhibition of over 200 of her photographs in 1991 also published in Photographs: Annie Leibovitz 1970-1990.
Her choice as official photographer for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics saw photographs of famous US athletes like Michael Johnson and Carl Lewis published in another book called Olympic Portraits.
Annie Leibovitz continues to photograph the rich and the famous and is still busily snapping away today.
